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| Sat, 20th Jun 2020 15:04:00 |
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The weekend read: Pirates of the PV industry |
Product piracy is a well-known threat in many industries, and in solar the risk posed by poor quality products from disreputable manufacturers making their way onto rooftops and other PV installations should not be underestimated. With manufacturers investing in solutions to protect against inferior products bearing their logo, pv magazine looks at the size of the problem.
Estimating the impact of product piracy in the solar industry is not easy to do. Since the price of a PV module is typically based on its measured output, it may appear that there is no immediate advantage for a 'pirate' producer in fraudulently slapping the logo of a more reputable manufacturer onto its own inferior products.
German company Viamon, which provides security services to the PV industry, says that it sees on average one to two cases per year involving counterfeit modules. China-based Quality Assurance provider Sinovoltaics, meanwhile, states that its experience related to counterfeiting is more along the lines of falsified power ratings or quality certifications, and even electroluminescence images being edited to hide cell cracking and other defects.
Several PV module manufacturers, however, have confirmed to pv magazine that they do see fake versions of their products available for purchase in various locations, and that they see solutions to prevent this as a worthwhile investment – even in times where profit margins in module production are stretched thin. "Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to determine an exact number of copycats, but year by year this problem is increasing, and we think that the dark figure is even higher," explains Waldemar Hartmann, sales director at German module producer AE Solar. "We see it quite frequently by ourselves, and our partners see it around the world."
When counterfeit modules are detected, AE Solar says it works both with the customer who purchased them and with legal advisers to track down the producer and prevent further counterfeiting. But it notes that with the network of intermediaries between production lines and end customers, it can be difficult to establish who makes such modules.
Read original full article
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